Édouard Manet | Le déjeuner sur l'Herbe, 1863 | Art in Detail

Rejected by the jury of the 1863 Salon, Manet exhibited Le déjeuner sur l’herbe under the title Le Bain at the Salon des Refusés (initiated the same year by Napoléon III) where it became the principal attraction, generating both laughter and scandal.

Yet in Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, Manet was paying tribute to Europe's artistic heritage, borrowing his subject from the Concert champêtre - a painting by Titian attributed at the time to Giorgione (Louvre) - and taking his inspiration for the composition of the central group from the Marcantonio Raimondi engraving after Raphael's Judgement of Paris.

But the classical references were counterbalanced by Manet's boldness. The presence of a nude woman among clothed men is justified neither by mythological nor allegorical precedents. This, and the contemporary dress, rendered the strange and almost unreal scene obscene in the eyes of the public of the day. Manet himself jokingly nicknamed his painting "la partie carrée".